After spending almost three weeks this summer arguing to a jury that Samsung had persistently copied its products, Apple won a stunning $1.05 billion patent and trademark verdict. But after that win—which, if it holds up, will be the largest patent verdict in history—Apple continued to pursue a even bigger prize. It sought a court-ordered injunction that would kick Samsung phones off the market altogether.

Now it's clear that an injunction is not in the cards. In an order [PDF] issued Monday, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh said that while Apple had established that "design, as a general matter, is important to consumers more broadly," it hadn't proven that infringement of its design patents caused "irreparable harm."

She goes on to discuss utility patents:

Apple did not establish at the preliminary injunction stage that the ’381 patent was central enough to Samsung’s products to drive sales, and has not established that fact here either. Nor has Apple established that either the ’915 or the ’163 patents actually drive sales of any Samsung products. Neither statements about broad categories, nor evidence of copying, nor the conjoint survey provides sufficiently strong evidence of causation.

The '163 patent had to do with the tap-to-zoom function, while the '915 and the '381 concerned pinch-to-zoom and the "rubber band" feature, respectively.

Apple had more luck asking for an injunction on the grounds that Samsung had infringed its "trade dress," the unique look of its products. But the problem with that argument is that none of the Samsung products found to "dilute" Apple's trade dress are on the market, in any form. "The parties have cited, and the Court is aware of, no case issuing a permanent injunction under the [Federal Trade Dilution Act] for products that are no longer available."

The company will surely ask for an injunction again on appeal, but that will take many months. Even at that time, it's going to be a very high bar. It looks like Apple may have to be satisfied with monetary damages in this case.

The last key post-trial issue Koh has to rule on is the issue of damages. Apple wants them to be significantly increased because of Samsung's willfulness. But at the key post-trial hearing last week, Koh was asking more questions about lowering damages than increasing them.

More than a dozen Samsung phones were found to infringe Apple patents. But by the time the injunction issue was fully briefed and argued in court, only three of the more than 20 Samsung phones accused at trial were still on the market—all different versions of the Galaxy S II.

When Koh made her final plea for a settlement last week, Apple's lawyer suggested that if they don't get an injunction, the litigation will have to drag on.

"If there's a new trial on damages, or no injunction—if you didn't see the same case that the jury saw—then I'm not sure," said Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny during last week's hearing. "I'm not sure how we get a resolution." The billion-dollar verdict, he said, would amount to no more than a "slap on the wrist."

While the products at issue here aren't on the cutting edge of the market anymore, the impact on Apple's overall litigation crusade is still very significant. If they couldn't convince a judge to grant a product-killing injunction after a major win in front of a jury, there's no reason to believe it will suddenly get easier, even if they do have another victory.

A new lawsuit full of patent claims and counter-claims involving Samsung's and Apple's newest phones is working its way through the courts as well. That case is scheduled for trial in 2014.

Jury foreman in the clear — no new trial

Samsung had argued Hogan was biased against it the whole time. He didn't disclose a lawsuit that Seagate, a former employer of Hogan's and a company partly owned by Samsung, filed against him 19 years ago.

Koh wrote:

As an initial matter, it is not clear whether Mr. Hogan was intentionally dishonest. Neither party has conclusively shown whether Mr. Hogan intentionally concealed his lawsuit with Seagate, or whether he merely forgot to mention it when asked by the Court whether he was ever involved in a lawsuit, or whether he believed that the answer he gave had sufficiently responded to the Court’s question. Further, it is not even clear that Mr. Hogan knew of any relationship between Seagate and Samsung. Mr. Hogan left Seagate’s employment in 1993, and his lawsuit against Seagate was nearly two decades ago.

Even if Hogan had been dishonest, Koh ruled, Samsung had waived its right to object because it didn't inquire much about Seagate during jury selection.

"Samsung cannot use post-verdict statements unrelated to any potential bias to restart the clock on its obligation to investigate," Koh wrote.

As for Samsung's post-trial project of combing through Hogan's interviews and finding spots where he was wrong on the the law, whatever evidence it produces in that manner is barred by the rules of evidence, Koh found. He had no outside knowledge "specific to the facts of this case," and his comments about what happened during deliberations, or jurors' "mental processes," are inadmissible.

Samsung's request for a new trial was a huge longshot based on one juror's long-ago connection to a company not even on trial. It's unsurprising that Koh would stand by the jury's verdict and not allow Samsung's fishing expedition to continue.

152 Reader Comments

I don't want to take sides on this complicated case, but what's the logic of the court on the one hand ruling that Samsung "willfully" infringed on Apple's patents, granting damages, but on the other hand refusing injunction? If the court really thinks that Samsung willfully infringed, then obviously injunction is much more powerful than mere damages. Even if Apple appeals on the decision, it is going to take a long time and the "damage" is done.

I understand the court's perspective on the injunctions and think it legally makes sense - but I still don't *like* it. Sure, the products that directly infringed on the trade dress are long gone, but they're the ones that helped Samsung establish its marketshare. The damage is done, and Samsung has reaped a lot more than a billion dollars, and will continue to do so.

Even at a billion dollars worth of damages (assuming it's upheld), it was worth Samsung's while to copy Apple's design and technology. That's a disturbing message.

I don't want to take sides on this complicated case, but what's the logic of the court on the one hand ruling that Samsung "willfully" infringed on Apple's patents, granting damages, but on the other hand refusing injunction? If the court really thinks that Samsung willfully infringed, then obviously injunction is much more powerful than mere damages. Even if Apple appeals on the decision, it is going to take a long time and the "damage" is done.

Injunction is only more powerful when the infringing devices are still on the market. When 17 of the 20 devices are already retired, then blocking those devices from sales is barely a tap on the wrist for Samsung. Meanwhile, 1.05 billion dollars in damages is still 1.05 billion dollars in damages.

I don't want to take sides on this complicated case, but what's the logic of the court on the one hand ruling that Samsung "willfully" infringed on Apple's patents, granting damages, but on the other hand refusing injunction? If the court really thinks that Samsung willfully infringed, then obviously injunction is much more powerful than mere damages. Even if Apple appeals on the decision, it is going to take a long time and the "damage" is done.

My understanding is that you can only get an injunction if the damage would be "irreparable". In other words, the court would only take the draconian step of an injunction if the damage to Apple from the product(s) staying on the market would be so bad that money wouldn't be enough to compensate for that damage. If money were enough, then the court would just grant money, instead of an injunction.

Current patent laws make no sense and have vastly inadequate guidance, for which the US Supreme Court refuses to rule in any way.

Not that almost any patent laws actually make economic sense, as has been fairly well argued by the St. Louis Federal bank among many, many others. But actual economic sense has little to do with current US law or politics. Instead Senators get to cover their ears and yell loudly, President Obama gets to appoint lawyers with clear conflicts of interest to the US Patent Office, and an ever more woefully ignorant and outdated legal system gets settled with making arbitrary decisions that conflict with each other.

it was worth Samsung's while to copy Apple's design and technology. That's a disturbing message.

I thought that's how things worked. I mean the Japanese have been doing it for years and with all the stolen IP collected, the Chinese are going to eventually perfect it, what ever it is, albeit by sheer mass production and a gazillion mfgs.

As several commentators predicted, Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) barred second-guessing the jury's internal deliberations and the attempt to use the juror's post-trial statements to discredit the jury's deliberations. Not exactly a surprise considering the rule and the case law surrounding it - the rule was written to stop exactly the sort of second-guessing Samsung was asking for - but I'm guessing Groklaw is fuming at Judge Koh right now.

Current patent laws make no sense and have vastly inadequate guidance, for which the US Supreme Court refuses to rule in any way.Not that almost any patent laws actually make economic sense,

I've long had the suspicion that the entire patent regime is completely broken. The vast majority of patents I read about should never have been granted, as they fail the "Person having ordinary skill in the art" or "prior art" tests, or encroach on an existing pattern. I first became aware of this when I was in charge of patents at a tech company a year ago, and it seems to have gotten gradually worse, with software patents, design patents etc. also getting used broadly. I'm starting to think the world would be better off with patents abolished completely.

This lawsuit is pretty typical. Apple did excellent integration work on the iphone, but as far as the UI is concerned, but no actual innovation AFAICS.

Both sides leave the field able to claim victory.In theory, Apple was the big winner. And they can claim significant reparations.Yet Samsung gained a great deal of territory, and can well afford those same reparations -- assuming they are ever actually forced to pay them.

On the moral level, Apple has been judged the official victor. But Samsung can point to the dubious antics of the jury as grounds for dismissing the entire contest as unfair.

Supporters of either side will remain unpersuaded.(And the crazy, frenetic patent circus continues unabated.)

This lawsuit is pretty typical. Apple did excellent integration work on the iphone, but as far as the UI is concerned, but no actual innovation AFAICS.

I remember how i rubbed up the apple fans when i said that the iphone was just a "logical progression" in phone development, they certainly competed well at the start, i'm not so sure now, when the competition has caught up.

Yup. And yet all the headlines are "Another blow to Apple". Hooray for the two-headed media, who delight in over-praising, then get equal delight from over-condemning. Didn't think Ars would go that route, though. Shame.

This particular ruling makes sense, ignoring the validity of the underlying patent which is well-trod ground and anyway the interesting issue for this article is that of patent remedies rather than patent infringement. This ruling (no injunction despite infringement) should come as no surprise to anyone who read the Federal Circuit's opinion a month or so ago, where that court basically went out of its way to address the injunction issue.

The individual patents infringed are either infringed by devices no longer on the market, or tiny components of the overall phone experience. In the first case there is no point to issuing an injunction (and there are a lot of long and boring Supreme Court cases on how a court is not allowed to issue pointless orders).

In the second case, the patent at issue is such a small component of the overall device that the plaintiff isn't being "irreparably injured," a new development in patent law because patent law is not set up well to deal with devices like smartphones that are made up of thousands of individual components, and illustrated by the fact that nobody in the entire world has ever bought an Android phone mistakenly thinking it was an iPhone because it had pinch-to-zoom. Also, Apple just licensed a bunch of these patents to HTC.

So as long as Apple is being made whole, which they are according to the jury verdict although that's a whole other clusterfuck, it's not in anybody's best interest for the judge to order hundreds of thousands of smartphones to sit unused and go to waste. All this boils down to to a recognition that nobody really wants to live in a world where Apple is the only smartphone game in town, and the law is slowly evolving to meet that recognition. This is probably the last great Apple patent war--Steve Jobs was great at polishing ideas in ways that aren't protectable.

Also, it wasn't "worth Samsung's while" to infringe the patent because they got all their profits taken away, which is what the IP holder deserves after you take away all the money Samsung invested in creating and marketing those phones. Apple made sure to account for every last dollar of its losses to the jury.

You may recall Samsung raising the prices of certain components that they supply to Apple (20%, if i recall). In the end, again if memory serves me correctly they lose little, if anything. This, besides the ill-will, is a main motivator for Apple to seek other suppliers and become less dependent on Samsung.

Im my mind, Samsungs request was always in doubt for two reasons - one, jury selection process is the time when Samsung is supposed to discover these things and remove the jury member, they had ample opportunity to do so and ... didn't. Two, there is no legal basis that I know of that restricts a "jury of your peers" from including people who have had prior contact with you in the past, even if that contact was negative - again, something Samsung could have dealt with in jury selection, and the fact that he made it through selection does not make the jury verdict shaky.

Two, there is no legal basis that I know of that restricts a "jury of your peers" from including people who have had prior contact with you in the past, even if that contact was negative - again, something Samsung could have dealt with in jury selection, and the fact that he made it through selection does not make the jury verdict shaky.

Odd. In the UK that is about the only reason (besides being involved in/aware of the case) for being excluded from a Jury, in fact the jurors themselves are asked to affirm they have no connection to anyone in the case or any witnesses (who's names are read out to them).

As several commentators predicted, Federal Rule of Evidence 606(b) barred second-guessing the jury's internal deliberations and the attempt to use the juror's post-trial statements to discredit the jury's deliberations. Not exactly a surprise considering the rule and the case law surrounding it - the rule was written to stop exactly the sort of second-guessing Samsung was asking for - but I'm guessing Groklaw is fuming at Judge Koh right now.

So basically, the jury could spend their time once the doors close playing cards, then flip a coin a few times to decide the verdict, and there's nothing anyone could do about it? Who in the seven hells thought that was a good idea?

On a more serious note, I looked up that rule and the exceptions to it are as follows:

(A) extraneous prejudicial information was improperly brought to the jury’s attention;(B) an outside influence was improperly brought to bear on any juror; or(C) a mistake was made in entering the verdict on the verdict form.

(C) definitely happened, and you could make a case that Hogan's "expert opinion" as a patent holder, which the other jurors admit having been led by, could qualify as extraneous prejudicial information (not to mention wrong) under (A).

Odd. In the UK that is about the only reason (besides being involved in/aware of the case) for being excluded from a Jury, in fact the jurors themselves are asked to affirm they have no connection to anyone in the case or any witnesses (who's names are read out to them).

Can or will Samsung argue that the patents are not valid and not obvious? There was a lot of talk about this right after the trial, since the Jury said they were instructed to ignore this, but I haven't heard anything lately about it.

Odd. In the UK that is about the only reason (besides being involved in/aware of the case) for being excluded from a Jury, in fact the jurors themselves are asked to affirm they have no connection to anyone in the case or any witnesses (who's names are read out to them).

Stubabe that is because like a lot of Americans are ignorant of the legal system. In other words Richardprice is blowing smoke out his arse. In the American system jurors can be challenged in two ways. There are peremptory challenges, where the lawyers just say they don't like you. Each side has a limited number of peremprtory challenges. Or the judge can remove you for cause. 99% of the time if you know a party in the case you will be dismissed.

I can't say for a fact that all judges read out the names of the witnesses but a lot do.

Can or will Samsung argue that the patents are not valid and not obvious? There was a lot of talk about this right after the trial, since the Jury said they were instructed to ignore this, but I haven't heard anything lately about it.

I do know that the jury was supposed to decide prior art. I can't say if they were supposed to lookat every aspect of patentability, but they were supposed to do most.

I also know that the patent office has already preliminarily declared one patent invalid and that Apple has filed papaers saying that one of their patents is invalid because it is a duplicate. ( btw the jury ruled that for some devices one had violated but not the other ).

Given the SCOTUS position on Bilski, Mayo and their action on Myriad I have to think that none of these patents may survive.